Scroggle, the search engine that allows users to search the web without Google tracking, has announced it will close down its service.

“We regret to announce that our Google scraper may have to be permanently retired, thanks to a change at Google. It depends on whether Google is willing to restore the simple interface that we’ve been scraping since Scroogle started five years ago,” writes Daniel Brandt of Scroggle’s Public Information Research. Google apparently removed the interface on May 10, 2010.

“Now that interface is gone. It is not possible to continue Scroogle unless we have a simple interface that is stable. Google’s main consumer-oriented interface that they want everyone to use is too complex, and changes too frequently, to make our scraping operation possible.”